Indestructible Drone
Indestructible Drone
Robots and drones can be used in emergency rescue situations. The big problem however is that robots get stuck in and against obstacles, such as water and debris like fallen buildings, forests etc. This reduces their use considerably. A normal drone just crashes when its rotor touches an obstacle lightly. These crashes almost always cause expensive damage to the drone and the equipment it is carrying.
A further complication of a drone is that it can cause serious injuries to humans when the high revving rotor comes in contact with a person.
Along comes a drone that takes all above mentioned problems in it's stride. It can fly through forests, it can bump into trees, without crashing and it can bump against people without injuring them.
Adrien Broid and Mariusz Kornatwski engineers at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL designed and built this drone.
They used a three axis gimball cage system to mount a two counter rotating rotor drone inside. The cage protects the drone and the obstacles (people) against injuries. The drone shown in the photo weighs in at only 370 g.
The frame is made of carbon fiber and it isolates the flying drone from obstacles, making it possible to absorb impact, without affecting the drone, that stay completely stable, during crashes. The drone can bump against ceilings, it can role along on the ground, it can fly over water and through pipes and through very difficult terrain, without affecting the drone inside the cage. This makes it ideal for rescue operations, as it can send visuals to the operator to assess the situation, before sending in humans to do the physical rescue.
Below are two very interesting videos demonstrating the versatility of the gimball drone.
Like I said in my post Forest Planting Drones, "And you thought drones are only toys to spy on your neighbors. The possibilities for this technology is almost limitless."
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the post.
The way the improve those drones is amzing, fast and spooky too!
I have never told you, but you present very cool stuff in your post. This is damned cool (like the cheetah) :)
Hi @lemouth
Thank you very much